This is a king whom Paris Hilton (a major political figure in Los Angeles at the time) makes a point to walk over to chat with during a timeout ...and then leans over to laugh at a joke by — not a forced laugh, I have it on good authority that it was a funny joke — later on in the game.

This NBA season was overtaken by Stephen "Steph" Curry. After winning it all last season, this year he led the Golden State Warriors to the best regular-season record in the history of the league. Rising from relative obscurity in his early years, Curry won a second MVP award on the strength of his otherworldly play, and as he began to regularly surpass superstar Lebron James, his team seemed easily headed for more glory. But tonight Steph's team faces elimination from the NBA playoffs, brought on by an Oklahoma City Thunder team few thought would compete for a championship with a first-year coach and a star player possibly leaving the team after this year. Here is how it is happening.
posted by cashman
on May 26, 2016 -
74 comments

On the racial injustice of big-time college sports: "Amateurism rules restrain campus athletes—and only campus athletes, not campus musicians or campus writers—from earning a free-market income, accepting whatever money, goods, or services someone else wants to give them. And guess what? In the revenue sports of Division I football and men's basketball, where most of the fan interest and television dollars are, the athletes are disproportionately black."
posted by ChuraChura
on Apr 6, 2016 -
51 comments

In The Gyms of Holmes County, Matt Tullis explains that, "In Holmes County, they get this idea of teamwork. And it starts with the Amish and Mennonite communities that call the county home." In Higher Education, Gary Smith writes, "Berlin's new basketball coach, the man with the most important position in a community that had dug in its heels against change, was an unmarried black Catholic loser. The only black man in eastern Holmes County."
posted by MoonOrb
on Mar 1, 2016 -
2 comments

The Hawks, like many professional sports teams, have a lot of free time to kill, much of it spent on airplanes traveling to games. Some of the players keep busy by watching movies. Many sleep. Others play cards, a popular pastime for athletes who are competitive by nature. Yet the Hawks’ card game of choice might come as a surprise. Teammates who have resisted the urge to wade into the Uno fray know enough to keep a safe distance.

Remember back in late November when Kobe Bryant announced he was planning to retire at the end of the current NBA season? Perhaps not surprisingly, this caused a major spike in ticket prices to Lakers games on the secondary ticket market.
Luckily for Kobe fan Jesse Sandler, he anticipated ahead of time that this might be Kobe's final season, and on November 11th (18 days before the official announcement) purchased (4) tickets for him and some friends to attend the final Lakers home game of the season at a cost of $195 per ticket as opposed to the nearly $1500 per ticket that comparable seats were going for following the announcement. Or so he thought. As it turned out, Sandler was to later learn that "NO TICKETS YOU EVER BUY ON STUBHUB – EVER –ARE ACTUALLY YOUR TICKETS."
Through their twitter account, Stubhub acknowledged, "We shot an air ball on this one."
posted by The Gooch
on Jan 7, 2016 -
50 comments

"11 books, including memoir, history, detective fiction and juvenile novels; magazine articles published in everything from the socialist Jacobin to the resolutely Main Street Rotarian; a gig commenting on current events for TIME following a run as a pop culture columnist for The Huffington Post; two films about his life, including HBO’s forthcoming Kareem: A Minority of One; and appearances on shows such as Meet the Press, where he’ll pose questions such as, 'Why must peaceful Muslims like myself answer for violent perversions of that religion while their counterparts in other faiths get a pass?' After years of trying to break back into the NBA as a full-time assistant coach, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 68, has found both comfort and a calling as a man of letters and a public intellectual."
posted by overeducated_alligator
on Jul 20, 2015 -
9 comments

Imagine if you will: a curtain is pulled back just to the left of the basketball goal, and two unicorns are there aggressively making out. Perhaps they’re wearing tutus. Meanwhile, you are supposed to be making your free throws, or getting ready to rebound a missed free throw. You must be playing a basketball game at Arizona State, for that is the Curtain of Distraction (warning: auto-playing video). [more inside]
posted by julen
on Mar 9, 2015 -
11 comments

"Gregg Nibert had something he needed to discuss.
The Presbyterian College head basketball coach had just seen his team lose its season opener to Duke, 113–44. “We’re not 69 points worse,” Nibert would say in his post-game press conference. No one in the room cared. Nibert wasn’t the story, nor were his Blue Hose players.

When I knew the Clippers were drafting me, the first thing I did was type Donald Sterling’s name into Google. The first hit that came up was “Donald Sterling is a racist.” I read an article on how he didn’t want minorities to live in his apartment buildings. My first thought was, Wow this guy is really, really a racist … how is he an owner of an NBA team? My second thought was, Wow, these articles are from 2003 and 2008. I guess everybody already knows about this stuff and just doesn’t care. As players, we’re not supposed to really care about anything but basketball. We’re just supposed to perform. To be honest, I didn’t ever really think about bringing up Sterling’s past. What was I supposed to do? Just picture me at the press conference my rookie year. “Uh … hey, guys, before we talk about today’s game, did you happen to see that investigative report on my owner?”
--
The Boss. An Essay about working for the NBA, by Blake Griffin.[more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Oct 16, 2014 -
33 comments

Wyoming Indian High is located in Ethete, a tiny town of about 1,500 residents, in central Wyoming. The school itself is composed of approximately 200 students, mainly from the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes on the Wind River Reservation. Given the hoops mania, though, the gym is the largest in the state, capable of holding 3,000-plus rabid fans. That’s right. A bunch of Native American kids from the rez are the basketball kings of Wyoming.
If you haven’t heard of this dominant team, you might know the area itself—the subject of consistently negative, reductive and often false representation(s) in the media, where life on the reservation is depicted as nothing but a sad, grim blight; and has served to reinforce all of the old prejudices about Native Americans."

Red Klotz, who led basketball’s biggest losers, the Washington Generals, dies at 93.
In his time with the Generals, Mr. Klotz lost at least 14,000 games, or 15,000, or, according to some estimates, more than 20,000.
“That sounds about right,” Mr. Klotz would shrug whenever someone tried to calculate the number.
“I don’t count the losses,” he told the Washington City Paper in 2007. “It’s easier to keep track of the wins.”
Mr. Klotz won six games, his biographer concluded. Or maybe it was four. Possibly just two. But definitely, beyond the shadow of any doubt, his team won one game for sure.
posted by Johnny Wallflower
on Jul 20, 2014 -
24 comments

Ever felt as though the ups and downs of the NBA playoffs and the chase for a ring is like an epic tale? Game of Thrones, NBA edition, part 1. [YouTube, 2:03] & Game of Thrones, NBA edition, part 2. [YouTube, 2:11]
posted by cashman
on Jun 13, 2014 -
10 comments

It's the ultimate gamble. If the young man is successful, he comes home a hero, and becomes important. His life has meaning and purpose. But in order to succeed, he must first completely open up his soul to the consequences of failure, knowing there may be no way back out. This, above all else, is the hardest thing to do. 20 Minutes at Rucker Park.
posted by Ghostride The Whip
on Oct 16, 2013 -
21 comments

"We have little trouble recognizing that a chess grandmaster’s victory over a novice is skill, as well as assuming that Paul the octopus’s ability to predict World Cup games is due to chance. But what about everything else?" [Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success]
posted by vidur
on Nov 20, 2012 -
16 comments

"If you go into a Web browser and type the full city-nickname combination and add a .com, 27 of those URLs will take you to the official team page." Not so for CharlotteBobcats.com. (autoplaying audio)
posted by reenum
on Jun 4, 2012 -
40 comments

"I'm just looking for a second chance. Other people get second chances. Alcoholics. Drug addicts. Spousal beaters. Not gamblers, though. But, if you want to put something on my tombstone that was very important to me, it’s 1,972. That’s how many winning games I’ve played in. So that makes me the biggest winner in the history of sports. No one else can say that."Here, Now is a short documentary that looks at baseball legend Pete Rose, as he lives his life today. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 23, 2012 -
45 comments

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